Moments

I woke up at around 3:00 a.m., same as I always do. But this was Saturday, and as I always do on an early Saturday morning, I felt a little thrill at the notion of two days doing whatever the hell I want. There were several thunderstorms rumbling through, but by 7:30 a.m. they were all moving off to the north east. I decided to make a donut run--my little tribe loves it when I do that--and stepped outside into an absolute wonderland of beauty. The storm clouds, billowing and dramatic, where gathered along the eastern horizon, right in front of the rising sun. I ran back to the house to get our digital camera, hoping to capture some little piece of the moment.

As I was wandering around the neighborhood snapping pictures of the sky, it occurred to be that I used to notice these sorts of moments all the time. Lately--and by lately I mean over the last ten or fifteen years--not so much. Finally I had to stop taking pictures and just stand there, wondering why.

I wish I could say that I found some answer to that question. I didn't. The whole time that I was standing there, looking up into that awesome pre-dawn sky, I felt like I was on the verge of waking up, as if the last ten or fifteen years of my life had only been a dream. It was kind of exciting and kind of sad. Exciting because I'm glad to know that part of me...the part I think of as the real me...is still lurking about somewhere in there. Sad because I feel like I got off track somewhere along the way, allowed myself to be distracted from my pursuit of a goal that, now, I can barely remember.

I remember back in my twenties I used to tell people that I wanted to remember something special about every day of my life. "I don't want to go to bed one night, twenty-three years old, and wake up the next morning forty-two." Standing there with my little digital camera, age forty three, I couldn't help but wonder if that is precisely what I had done, all of my efforts notwithstanding. Maybe it's inevitable. At any rate, I'm awake now, and the world is just as beautiful and mysterious as it was when I nodded off, all those years ago.

I think I'm going to need to get a better camera, though.